The coastal area southeast of Melbourne is providing a permanent escape as the pandemic endures.
5 min
It’s been anything but business as usual for the Mornington Peninsula, one of Australia’s blue-chip coastal regions, an hour southeast of Melbourne.
Against the backdrop of the global pandemic, rising unemployment, strict social distancing and economic fears, the prestige coastal community has offered homeowners a refuge and demand has seen it rise to become one of the country’s best performing areas.
Once the domain of wealthy second-home owners who decamped to their holiday properties over summer, it’s become a permanent hotspot with buyers across all price brackets trying to get a foothold in the area for the best part of six months.
Offering an appealing mix of diverse housing and an aspirational coastal lifestyle, the Mornington Peninsula is a comfortable commute to Melbourne’s Central Business District and has immediate access to restaurants, cafes, wineries and recreational activities.
Peninsula Sotheby’s International Realty managing director Robert Curtain described 2020 as being “a very different real estate market.”
“Every month since March 2020 has been a record month for us in terms of total sales value and volume,” he said.
There was no let-up in interest over Christmas and New Year’s holidays after a busier than expected trading period in the winter reduced stock levels ahead of summer.
Among several notable transactions in December, was the $5.5 million (US$4.26 million) sale of a two-bedroom house on 461 square meters of beachfront land on Mentor Road on Blanarring Beach and a home on Bowen Road in Sorrento that sold for more than A$4.5 million within 24 hours of hitting the market.
An architect-designed house on MacGregor Avenue in Portsea, which has a price guide of A$6.8 million to A$7.3 million, is typical of what discerning buyers are looking for in a luxury Peninsula property Mr. Curtain said.
Designed by Guildford Bell with five bedrooms and five bathrooms, it occupies a private 3,000-square-meter block in easy walking distance of the beach.
“High buyer demand and a lack of stock creates competition and ultimately strong sales results. This year we have seen very quick and sharp increases in property prices never seen before,” Mr Curtain said of the activity.
“The majority of buyers are either upgrading existing homes or making a longer-term commitment to buying on the peninsula. Without question the restrictions on travel has changed lifestyle options for many buyers,” he said.
Australia implemented international and national border control measures and physical distancing rules to reduce the spread of Covid-19 from March 2020.
Movement restrictions and social distancing requirements resulted in a ban on all in-person property inspections and auctions across the country.
Although Australia flattened the curve and lockdown restrictions eased in late May, a cluster of cases led to a second wave of infections in Victoria. A “state of disaster” was declared and Victoria faced severe restrictions including a nightly curfew, mandatory face coverings in public and the closure of schools and businesses between August and October. The Victorian Department for Health and Human Services reports more than four million Victorians have been tested for the virus since March with the state recording several days of zero new cases in early January.
Kay & Burton Portsea managing director Liz Jensen, who has sold property on the Mornington Peninsula for 35 years, said she was shocked at the demand that followed the lift in restrictions in October.
She said while the area was usually always busy in spring, she estimated inquiry levels increased three-fold once Victorians were allowed to move freely around their state again.
Big-Ticket Sales
The momentum of spring on the Mornington Peninsula has carried through to summer according to agents. More than 32,000 people have taken a shine to a listing for a home on Wild Coast Road in Portsea, making it one of Australia’s most viewed properties in January, according to online sales portal, realestate.com.au.
Several groups have conducted private inspections since it was listed the week prior to Christmas and an offer is imminent, said Ms Jensen, who is the listing agent for the property.
With a price guide of $8.8 million to $9.75 million, the eight-bedroom luxury home is embedded among the sand dunes and is not your “usual beach house,” Ms Jensen said.
Its indulgent resort-like feel has been designed to cater for large family gatherings or to be shared with groups of friends.
“There’s not much in these areas, it’s a thin market, so there’s always a level of buyers for properties of this calibre,” she said.
“Buyers are accelerating their plans, they’re not old enough to retire, but they’re choosing homes down here to live in permanently. We have people buying everything in every price bracket from $1.5 million to $10 million and everything in between.”
Buyers, she said, are looking with intention and showing a new appreciation for the established area.
“Over the last Covid year and going into this one, I find people to be very clear in their mind that they want to live a certain lifestyle that is more relaxing and less stressful,” she said.
“They want to enjoy themselves more and be able to share that with their family and friends. That works well down here,” she added.
A Strong Outlook for 2021
The trend hasn’t been lost on REA chief economist Nerida Conisbee, who picked the Mornington Peninsula as one of her top 2021 regional performers, based on its stellar results in 2020.
“Mainly because the region has seen the biggest jump in views per listing in Australia this year,” she said.
“The most popular suburb with house hunters is Blairgowrie where views per listing have more than doubled in 2020. It suggests buyer demand is accelerating while prices in Portsea jumped 20% last year to hit almost $2.4 million.”
However, Ms Conisbee expects Australia’s best-performing regional areas to be those that are closest to a capital city as movement returns and restrictions ease.
Regional Australia
The Australian Government’s $257 billion in direct economic stimulus to cushion the blow of the pandemic and the country’s record-low interest rate have helped support the property market but it’s the explosion of people shifting from capital cities that has had a dramatic impact on regional markets.
The spike in city-dwellers fleeing urban environments for a coast or country lifestyle meant regional house prices grew faster than metropolitan values for the first time in nearly 15 years.
Regional property values jumped 6.9% in the 12 months to December 2020 more than three times the 2% figures of the combined capital cities, CoreLogic revealed last week.
CoreLogic’s Asia Pacific Head of Research Tim Lawless said it was the first time during a rising market where regional markets had outpaced capital cities. Traditionally, regional areas outperformed capital cities during downturns.
“As remote working opportunities became more prevalent and demand for lifestyle properties and lower density housing options became more popular, regional areas of Australia saw housing market conditions surge,” Mr Lawless said.
It’s a movement not lost on the Mornington Peninsula, which appears to have its short-term future all but assured with January set to be another record month, according to Mr Curtain at Sotheby’s.
“The forecast for 2021, especially the first half, is likely to stay very strong as a lack of stock with more people using their homes than ever continues and cheap money provides further confidence for buyers,” he said. “But it’s a crazy world, so I’ll leave predicting the latter half of the year to those with a crystal ball.”
Copyright 2020, Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved Worldwide. LEARN MORE
The Australian leather house has opened an immersive four-day pop-up in Manhattan, unveiling its Bloom Collection and redefining what a product launch can look like.
Following the successful launch of its Palais Collection, MAISON de SABRÉ has unveiled a new modular handbag system offering more than 720 styling combinations.
Georgetown agent Jamie Peva blends history and real estate on Instagram, turning local stories into a powerful sales strategy.
5 min
On a recent morning in Georgetown—Washington, D.C.’s oldest neighborhood—real-estate agent Jamie Peva strode down leafy N Street, brimming with historical tidbits.
Jackie Kennedy once lived on the street, he said. So did Ben Bradlee, former executive editor of the Washington Post, along with a former Miss America and a powerful U.S. Senator. Bradlee’s widow, author Sally Quinn, and Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, own stately homes there.
“I’ve seen a picture of Lyndon Johnson coming out of this house,” said Peva, passing a Federal-style brick mansion. “Also, the Beatles went to a lawn party here.”
Peva, a 60-year-old agent with Washington Fine Properties, has sold Georgetown real estate for over three decades, often traversing the neighborhood by bicycle. Of the roughly 2,500 houses in the historic neighborhood, he has been involved in the sale of 460, he estimated. A self-styled historian of the neighborhood, he knows stories behind its houses and their owners going back generations.
With a knack for lively storytelling, he shares his knowledge with some 37,500 Instagram followers, who have made Peva—sporting the bow ties he has worn since boarding school—an unlikely social-media influencer. Many of his followers are locals, and most have no plans to buy or sell real estate—until they do. It is then, according to Peva, that his spirited reels bring him to mind.
“It’s the digital version of a refrigerator magnet,” he said.
After Peva’s first video in November 2023, his eponymous Instagram account sparked a 10% increase in sales volume in the first year, and another 20% the next, he estimated. “It’s been very good for business, there is no question about it,” he said.
But Peva’s posts have also made him a local celebrity. As he walked down N street, the driver of a Mercedes station wagon slowed down to honk and wave. A lady walking a large dark gray dog stopped to ask what he was filming that day (a reel about a Colonial-era bottling plant.) Peva knew the dog from walking his two springers, Jumpy and Peggy-O, in the neighborhood.
“I need to make a video about the pooches of Georgetown,” he mused.
A growing number of real-estate agents now use social media to sell, and some have millions of followers with reels featuring ultraluxury pads, selling tips or reality TV-style reports on their daily lives. While Peva posts about his listings—and sometimes those of other agents—he mostly focuses on Georgetown history, local businesses and community events, saying his goal is to benefit both his business and the neighborhood.
“If we don’t find something genuinely interesting and worth sharing, we won’t do it,” said Peva’s daughter, Violet Peva, a New York social-media strategist who films, edits and posts his reels. “We cover many topics, not just real-estate information.”
Peva is originally from Connecticut, but has lived in Georgetown for over 30 years, currently in a cottage-style house with a white picket fence. Over the years, Georgetown has changed. The Georgetown Set, a powerful group of Cold War-era residents whose Sunday-night potluck dinners are said to have swayed U.S. policy, has long faded away. The community is still home to high-profile Washingtonians, including a Republican senator and several cabinet members. But it increasingly also attracts technology and finance executives, according to Peva. He now routinely signs nondisclosure agreements, ensuring privacy for wealthy clients. The shift has made him rethink his marketing approach.
“For years, a big part of our Georgetown business was made up of people who maintained a low profile,” he said. Real-estate agents were similarly low-key. Today, curb appeal is more important, he said, and agents are promoting themselves more. “As this change was underfoot, I was thinking that I needed to evolve myself too,” he said.
Though his own social-media use is mostly limited to following sailing accounts, he asked his daughter to help him post his listings online. Violet, now 26, started coming to D.C. once a month to film his reels. After an early video, on a condominium building called the Elliott, her sister Fern called her to report: “Daddy’s blowing up on Instagram,” Violet recalled. The reel got over 50,000 views. The next two each drew over 300,000. Peva’s most popular post ever, with over 838,000 views, was about the Grateful Dead playing in Georgetown. Sometimes, Peva interviews Georgetowners such as Quinn, the author, or Jamie Stachowski, the owner of a local butcher shop.
Peva, who majored in history in college, now spends up to two hours a day on research, usually in the morning while on his stationery bike. Online, he pores over old newspapers or the Library of Congress website, and he has a collection of articles and books—in and out of print—about Georgetown.
Companies often approach Peva for promotional posts, he said, but he turns them down, feeling that followers would lose interest in constant commercials. One exception is a recent paid post on Mount Vernon, the former home of George Washington. Peva wanted to share its history, he said, and didn’t want to lose the opportunity to another Instagrammer.
Anthony Arend, a professor at Georgetown University, has lived in his current home for 19 years without any plans to sell or buy real estate. But he follows Peva and often likes his posts.
“He is very charismatic, he is energetic, and he obviously knows a lot about the community,” said Arend, who has referred house-hunting friends to Peva.
One of Peva’s biggest deals—the $10.5 million sale of a 19th-century Italianate mansion—came after he made two 2024 reels featuring the property. In March, he sold the longtime O Street home of Tim and Jane Matz for $5.8 million after featuring it on his Instagram. Peva had showed them the home 25 years earlier, with Violet in a baby carrier on his back.
Last year, Kate Watts, 49, a digital consultant, called Peva to sell her late father’s three-bedroom house on Q Street; her husband had seen Peva on Instagram. In an October reel, Peva praised the architecture of the house, designed by modernist Hugh Newell Jacobsen. Halfway through, he mentioned an open house the next day, ending with an upbeat: “Did I also mention this house is for sale? $3.75 million!” The reel got 27,000 views, the open house was packed, and the buyers made an offer at the list price on the same day.
